The estimated number of foreign visitors to Japan in September increased 11.7-fold from a year earlier to 206,500, government data showed Wednesday, with the figure likely to jump in the coming months after Japan removed almost all its COVID-19 entry restrictions earlier this month. The figure exceeded 200,000 for the first time since February 2020 but was down 90.9 percent from September in the pre-pandemic year of 2019, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization. Visitors in the month were primarily businesspeople, technical interns and international students. Although the governme...
